


Take Note

by beware_phangirl (dantiloquent)



Series: One Shots [10]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: A Cappella, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Music, Competition, Friends to Lovers, Kinda, M/M, Pining, Possibly Unrequited Love, Unrequited Love, alcohol mention, smoking mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2015-04-19
Packaged: 2018-03-24 20:07:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3782659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dantiloquent/pseuds/beware_phangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“we’re in opposing a cappella teams in uni” au, in which dan plays ukulele and phil gets too much out of wearing jumpers</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Note

**Author's Note:**

> this was inspired loosely by [this](http://pianoboyhowell.co.vu/post/114655099926/the-signs-as-favorite-things), [this](http://pianoboyhowell.co.vu/post/116012210306/the-signs-as-three-feelings), [this](http://pianoboyhowell.co.vu/post/113367032021/im-picturing-us-on-rooftops-in-strange-cities#notes), [this](http://frickgerard.tumblr.com/post/113117027686/date-idea-look-the-stars-n-listen-to-acoustic), and [this ](http://pianoboyhowell.co.vu/post/114139958171/lesterotic-things-id-probably-pay-to-see-part-2)v precious post by lesterotic
> 
> (some things to assist: [this ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4sWRjoe6W0)is a riff off, [this ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dV0F8PNiBhE)is a great a cappella version of we are young, [this ](http://40.media.tumblr.com/83afa24a35d1125c2dd8801915d2741c/tumblr_mrcftdUxol1sc50pho1_r1_500.jpg)is the jumper. all living things are made from carbon. just picture a song which makes u think of belonging.)  
> read [here](http://pianoboyhowell.co.vu/post/116838652891/take-note)

_what would my head be like_  
_if not for your shoulders or_  
_without your smile may it_  
_follow you forever_  
-  
When Phil had first arrived, his room had seemed small. Now, as he rummages amongst the shelves and clothes piled into wonky towers on the tattered carpet, it seems too big. He’s turned the whole room upside down twice, at least - he’s very tempted to use the phrase literally - and as he works around again the walls seem too stretched out, augmented, and an effulgently bright shade of sky blue. The rays of sunshine look a bit like clouds on the bleached paint.

It’s nine in the morning, and Phil’s nearly late to his class on semi-colons and every other excuse his professor can find to talk about the evolution of the English language. _Did you know that the American accent was actually the original British one?_ If Phil didn’t know by now, he should quit.

“Have you seen my socks?” Phil asks as the door opens. Dan frowns in thought, casting a quick glance around the turmoil.

“The ones with eyes?”

“No,” Phil shakes his head, “The other ones.” He hasn’t paid attention to just how many socks he has until now, or how many times he’s managed to lose them.

“Oh. Then no, I haven’t.”

“Oh.” Phil squares his jaw, turns back to the pile of clothes his hands are buried in and narrows his eyes. “Wait, what do you know about the ones with eyes?” he calls, twisting his head back around, but the door has already swung shut.

And that’s just about their interaction for the day.

-

They sleep in the same room, and use the same kitchen, and sometimes Phil does Dan’s washing up if he’s feeling nice, yet they’ve somehow managed to avoid bonding. Phil knows Dan has the same sense of humor as him, and there is every reason for them to be the closest of friends, but it’s like they’ve got diamagnetic orbits; they circle each other and acknowledge the other’s existence, but always from a measured distance which never shortens. Phil is scared that he’ll get repelled or shocked by sparks if he gets too close.

Phil can’t remember what it’s like to listen to music without headphones.

-

Dan was already settled into the room when Phil arrived. His belongings were forced into drawers and spilling onto the carpet, only covering one half of the room. Dan was sprawled out, oddly elegant, on his bed, aged book in hand, leather jacket drooping off the mattress. Music playing.

“Welcome to Mordor,” Dan had said, grinning a bit awkwardly as Phil blinked away the sunlight-induced spots in his vision. “You’ve got that side of the room.”

Something was playing, a soothing, misty, ubiquitous noise that intenerated the air around him to a calibre which felt like belonging.

“Thanks,” Phil says, oddly bashful and dentiloquent as his thoughts stumble over unstraightened waves of sepia hair and eyes paying attention only to the music.

-

Phil just thought he was meant to stay away.

-

Phil goes to an a cappella group every week, an activity forced upon him by his mother and older sister and continued by him. It feels a bit like carving away at the music when he sings. He learns new shapes for his mouth and fastidiously hums for several major offbeats at a time. It’s fervent and takes time to perfect, but now he’s a bit addicted.

“Are you happy?” Alyssia says, handing him flimsy sheets of music. Her fingernails are painted a nude rose and her hand is smattered with paper cuts, but that’s what you get when you’re in charge of a choir, Phil decides. Paper cuts, that is, from sorting all the manuscript; not nail varnish, though maybe that’s a bonus gift from _a cappella weekly_ , or something.

“In life or with the music?”

“The music, you idiot.”

Serifed fonts spell out a title which, in his head, translates to last minute birthday parties and singing on top of couches; so, “Yes, I am.”

-

Phil doesn’t know Dan does a capella until he spots him at the university showcase. The event is held in a dingy room with broken chairs but it has a stage and a working sound system, which is all that matters. The lights are off; they cast a ‘dramatic effect’ but, really, half the room knows it’s because the lights flicker like a cranky disco ball. 

He catches sight of Dan halfway through a keychange, in a concoction of Madonna and My Chemical Romance which Phil never thought he’d see. Dan winks at him, which doesn’t serve well for his harmonies, but Phil is relying on the enthusiasm of the spotlight and the distance between their trajectories to hide the blush splattered shamefully along his cheekbones.

-

Phil knows and stores away in his head what Dan sounds like when he laughs, when he yawns, when he cries through jarred doors, and now he knows what he sounds like when he sings. 

His eyes go bright and there’s something about the way he holds himself which means Phil blushes when he remembers they share a room.

-

Phil’s listening to his music and the way it buzzes in his ear suggests it’s too loud, but he can’t find a part of himself willing to care. The rain falling outside clatters to the ground and against everything in its path with conviction, and the air spilling in through the window neither of them have bothered to shut smells of smoke and alcohol.

The music crescendos, and Dan looks up. He can hear it, and Phil’s fingers edge clumsily towards the volume control. Dan grins.

“Turn it up,” he says.

Phil’s fingers head for the headphone dock instead, yanking them out.

“What other bands do you like?” Dan enquires, sitting, legs crossed, on the end of Phil’s bed. The words encroach on more questions; Phil sees it as a proposition for friendship and readies himself for a long night.

-

Planets can’t change orbit. They crash into one another and crumble and disappear into radioactive black holes after years of dodging stars. Phil knows that, but it happens to him and Dan nonetheless.

They eat together and sing together, and more often than not, Dan falls asleep with his head against or on Phil’s bed, the paper he’s writing crinkling under his limp hand.

Phil can’t decide which is his favourite: singing with Dan, or seeing Dan asleep at the end of his bed. Dan’s a blur of warmth when that happens, impalpable and tranquil, subconscious curves of smiles accompanying the enamouring sigh of his chest. There’s a growing thud behind Phil’s sternum.

-

Dan wears leather jackets and floral prints and bomber jackets, his wardrobe eclectic and confused in the best way. Phil sometimes manages to wheedle his way into twining flower crowns into Dan’s hair, because _I know you like floral, don’t lie to me_. Dan owns chunky sweaters which he chucks at Phil when he starts to shiver.

-

Dan is atrophying treble clefs on dishevelled smiles, some lambent star systems flickering in his eyes behind toppling hair. Sometimes he’s vestigial, turning pallid and tired and curling against Phil’s thigh. 

And sometimes, he’s much, more more.

Phil likes music because it’s a way to convey feeling, and he tries to clip crumbling notes and lyrics together but there are always more bonds to make, and none fit quite right until Dan joins in.

He feels a bit lame, really. But one night Dan says that _if something means something to someone, then it matters to their cosmos even if the universe doesn’t give a fuck; it’s your own world, after all._ That’s justification enough.

-

Phil wasn’t going to go to the ‘Riff Off’. It’s an event he hasn’t been to before, but he knows the premise: the university’s a cappella groups gather for a friendly competition. The groups are given a theme, after which one group - whoever comes up with a song to fit the subject first - starts, and it’s then the goal to link a new song to it. The aim is to wing it and not get cut off - Phil’s not entirely sure how they find a winner. 

It’s not the people, he tells Alyssia, it’s the whole improvisation thing which puts him off. And it’s late at night, the time of day when he wants to edge into the creases of his sheets and crawl into a book, perhaps with Dan plucking at his ukulele and humming snippets of dismembered songs under his breath. Their room always smells more of beverages then, the aroma steaming from the walls and turning the air into comfort and vintage filters. Something out of all that makes it especially desirable.

Dan’s going to the Riff Off, but that doesn’t mean Phil’s sold. He’s sat arms crossed on his bed, book lopsided on his bent knee, watching Dan get ready.

“Pros of going to this thing?”

“People. Free food. It’s an experience,” Dan half mocks. “You’ll get to know what it’s like in a competition, and this is hands down the best one.” A pause. “You’ll be with me,” Dan grins, lopsided through the mirror, back at Phil as he combs his fingers through his fringe.

Phil scoffs. “Cons?”

“None. Unless you hate a cappella, which - well.”

“True. But, Dan - it’s _improvising_ ,” Phil points out, tone painting out his reluctance. He keeps catching Dan’s gaze in the looking glass, and it’s a crooked kind of breath taking, in the way shattered glass casts iridescent mackles on the asphalt - distorted and dangerous.

“You’ll never know unless you try,” Dan returns. He finishes, adjusts the collar of his jacket and turns back to Phil. He holds out his hand. “Come on.”

Phil holds his gaze, and a smile creeps onto his face. He takes the proffered hand, and the opportunity to hold Dan’s hand wasn’t the defining argument but there’s a satisfying clap as their hands meet and the gossamer lines of his palm aren’t visible when it’s twined with Dan’s, so it could have been, really. The gesture is confirmation enough, and Dan tugs him up.

“I knew you’d come.”

“Mm, no you didn’t.”

“It’s my irresistible company.”

“You wish.” Phil takes the jumper Dan holds out to him with a roll of his eyes, but pulls the fabric down until it doesn’t scratch and tugs at the cusps, butterscotch and faded in colour, over his hands.

“Aca-believe it, baby.” Dan laughs and Phil groans.

“That was terrible,” he complains, but Dan just called him baby and he would be lying if he says he doesn’t grin.

-

Phil isn’t sure how to exactly explain where the Riff Off is held. It’s a mix between a skate park and a sports hall, a rectangle space suffocated by concrete and squashed between two buildings. There are ledges a few metres above for people to sit on, with more participants and spectators dotted about the ground below. The sky is merely a blank canvas to act as a roof, empty meridians and angles of declination left clueless by brume. Splayed out fingers of lucent phosphorescence and lax conversations detail the crags, heartbeats humming in the frequencies of argots and elisions like clacking bones. The high-up bulbs douse one side of Dan’s face in light, detailing virtues and blemishes and stressing shadows like dark matter, but it also hides the circles which have started to crack, indigo and ghastly, under his eyes and Phil focuses on the way one eye sparks with molten spessartite garnets when the beams hit it. He’s searching for fault lines between them with careless glances and winding fingers.

There’s a heavy beat playing somewhere, bouncing off the ground, and they walk just out of time with it. 

“There’s a lot of people.”

“Nothing more than what you’re used to. You’ll be fine, Phil - you’ll be fantastic. Pretend it’s just me you’re competing with,” Dan suggests, jacket framing shifting shoulders and a soothing smile. And of course he’d suggest that, because that’s what they come back to, in the end: pretending, with sycamore seeds as helicopters and feathers as angel wings - trying, going, gone.

“That could be easy, considering how competitive you are,” Phil jibes, flimsy and distrait. 

“That’s the spirit,” Dan jokes with a jaunty arm swing. A smile adorns his expression - mirth straining corners of spheres and musky roses - as they separate, Dan nudging Phil in the right direction with a jagged thumbs up.

“You showed, then?” Alyssia asks, peering over manuscript as Phil comes over. He drinks in the borders between the groups of silhouettes, shrugs.

“I had nothing better to do.”

Alyssia attentitively watches him for a second, mouth parting like the answer is tainting the edge of her tongue, before she grins.

“Glad you could make it,” she says. Searching through a jumbled stack, she pulls out a sheet, hands it to Phil. “You’re in, soldier.”

The paper wrinkles between his fingers, which appear garishly crimson under the bleaching electricity. The text spells out titles and themes shoved into columns.

“I thought this was all improv?” Phil queries, frowning down between font sizes.

“It is. These are just the themes, and some songs we came up with. It gives us a rough idea where to head, you know? Feel free to make a paper aeroplane with it once we’ve started.”

“Will do. Anyone you want me to aim at?”

Alyssia surveys the crowds, eyes landing on one figure in Dan’s group on the other side of the space. He’s practising some rhythm with another singer, dark skin impressive under the light. She points, “That one,” and laughs.

“You’ve gotta be realistic!” Phil exclaims. “This thing will reach a metre at most.”

She laughs again, lifts her hands in a helpless gesture, and leaves with a _same_ which drifts away into the syncopation.

Minutes later, someone comes into the middle of the group, filling the space with his arms and his voice. His face is fully illuminated by the floodlights, face round and hair close to his skull and Phil keeps crossing over him to find Dan in the crowd, expectant and smiling, smiling too much for what Phil knows.

“Alright, people!” he yells, and the groups fall silent. Everyone’s waiting.

He lifts up what looks like a torch and points it at the wall. A wheel appears over the concrete, a projection made from the bright light ejecting from his fist, and spins over what Phil can easily guess are the themes. There’s a rumble of feet and fists, a student drum roll which thunders through Phil’s chest, before the spinner lands on “songs from the 80’s”. Next, there’s a dash for the centre, to get in first.

Dan’s team has the first say. One who Phil is sure is the ring leader is followed by the rest, and feet stomp on the ground as they begin a rendition of ‘Hey Mickey’ that makes Phil grin down at the beginnings of a paper aircraft. Soon enough, another group cuts in, and another song is underway. Phil puts a hand to his chest and sends a pout Dan’s way. _My condolences_ , it says, teases. Dan spots him and flips him off, sending Phil into another tender fit of giggles.

There’s a nudge in his side, Alyssia coming up beside him. “You ready?”

“Why not?” is all he can say, because there’s a hum in his ears and he will feel empty until he joins in.

The aeroplane flutters to the ground impatiently.

The Riff Off is competitive, and the competition between him and Dan is addictive, is what it is. It’s addictive to tease each other and it’s addictive to pretend he wasn’t just captured in the sound of empowering harmonies. They send _whatever_ ’s and _fuck you_ ’s to each other across the cratered ground, shaped by smiles and glittering eyes and Phil thinks that maybe he could do this forever, if it means sending messages to Dan while he sings. 

They don’t talk at all, yet this could be the best conversation they have ever had. (Of course, it’s not, not really, but it totally could be and he’s willing to hold onto that.)

There’s a part, when the theme is “songs about sex”, which sends two members of his team to the front, singing and grinding against each other while challenging the others with sly smiles and raised eyebrows, and he debates whether they’re drunk or just enjoying themselves, and he decides he doesn’t care because he’s enjoying himself, too. 

And then Dan dives in, cutting them off with a hand gesture and close cutting vowels. Most of them resile with a grumble, but Phil just grins.

“ _And I guess that’s just the woman in you, that brings out the man in me_ ,” Dan begins on his own, pointing to Phil with an uncontainable smile and it shouldn’t make sense, but it does, and they’re too caught up in this competition to care. Phil blows a kiss Dan’s way, any bitter truth shielded with joking, and the harmonies are building up and Dan’s still singing to him, arms held out wide and eye contact oscillating away and back again. It’s just a little bit beautiful - it’s just a little bit fucking beautiful and it’s proving to him that he’s fucked. Just a little bit.

(It’s all a joke, is the thing.)

When Dan sings he’s projecting neon lights onto the world around him, pouring his soul out in melodic eruptions. It’s captivating and fun, the whole thing is fun, and Phil’s noting the melodies and singing silently along in his head. He’s several layers of emotions, alternating and addled, and he’s feeling like he could be gradations of incandescent yellow.

“You’ll have to return the gesture,” Alyssia says from his side, suddenly and cheerfully.

“Why?” Phil asks, blinking.

“It’s only polite,” she explains, but there’s something more behind her eyes. Phil shoves her, _shut up_ , and as he takes the step forward there’s a rustle.

It’s the paper aeroplane.

(It shouldn’t matter, but it does, God, everything matters and everything is delicate like paper and part of Phil wishes paper were made out of fairy wings just so he could dream of escape, but that would be one more thing murdered-)

“ _I’m touched_ ,” he mouths to Dan.

“ _I know. Thank you, thank you_ ,” Dan pretends to bow.

“ _Get over yourself_.” _Don’t, please_ , Phil then thinks.

“ _Why should I?_ ” 

_Prove it, then; prove to me you’re worth this_ , Phil doesn’t say. Dan’s still watching him, golden and lovely and Phil’s looking at him through dusk and sunspots. 

He shrugs instead.

The Riff Off passes by with more hand gestures and mimed words that send Phil’s head spinning, his jaw aches from smiling and chill runs over fingers that are clenched into fists. It’s over too quickly; neither his or Dan’s team wins, and they don’t talk about anything that matters on the way back, like how Dan sung to him or how they’re shoulders keep brushing or how it’s Christmas break tomorrow and that means several weeks without each other.

The fact that they don’t talk about those things matters most, and of course Phil doesn’t talk about that.

-

Dan sends Phil a jumper and a mixtape for Christmas. The jumper is galaxy print, a burning orange celestial system smattered across the cotton in one flare, the flash accompanied by stars, random dots of white and scintillating blues. Phil slips it over his head and experiences a brief feeling of power - xingfu, he recalls.

Phil has still got Dan’s jumper, the one he had given him the evening before they parted ways for the break. It’s neatly folded and sat in his suitcase awaiting return. Phil doesn’t know why Dan didn’t ask for it back, but he definitely isn’t against it. The fact that every now and again he takes it out is his business only, but it is shamefully true. He plays with the woollen creases. Sometimes he rests his face in it’s clutches, lets his eyes flutter shut, breathes, just exists for a second. It smells a bit like wind and coffee, and a lot like home.

The mixtape is a recording of Dan singing Slade, plucks of a guitar overlapping his voice. Phil rolls his eyes because it is stupid, he reckons that’s the intention, but he pushes the wrapping away all the same and finds his meandering way downstairs. 

“Do we have a tape player?” he asks his mother once he’s read the label: _‘it’s christmas!’_ written in disjointed curls of ink.

“In the study, I think,” she replies. “Why?”

But Phil has already flown from his spot on the door frame.

-

His room is practically a twin for the one back in University. It carries the same mess and the same important possessions; glowing stars scattered over the ceiling and scars of blu-tack on the walls, clothes in child towers and the drawers never fully shut. The only differences are that there’s only one bed, shoved against the cracking plaster, rather than two, and there’s a distinct lack of Dan. Of course, Phil won’t admit that this is the most important thing and that he can’t really wait until the gap is filled again. He just sits amidst cracker crumbs and cheap duvets and tugs at the drawstrings of the jumper.

-

“What is this, the 90’s?” isn’t the best first thing to say upon return from the holiday, but it leaves Phil’s chapped lips as he skitters into the room, holding up the tape. Dan looks up from his spot on his bed, lanky legs stretched over a crisp new duvet and music playing again, and he grins. (It’s more than deja vu: heart beats, clatters, falls.) Phil sighs out a laugh, arm slacking just a little, and it’s a _why_ alongside _you’re so lame i love it_ easily communicated between the pair.

“It could be, with your fashion choices,” Dan retaliates. Phil doesn’t know what he means; he’s wearing the galaxy jumper Dan gave him, for fucks sake, and tattered jeans and most probably at least one of Dan’s socks. But he keeps his mouth shut, too caught up in a smile and a filled gap to respond.

(So this is how they greet each other, now.)

-

Phil is chiselling short poems into the margins of his notebook with running-out biro. They’re more necklaces of words cut before the clasp, really, _i am frightened ocean storms_ and _you make it easy to forget’s_ repeated in synonyms amongst other nonsense sentences that won’t make sense in the morning. _nonSENSE, SENSEtences, SENSE._ Phil smothers a laugh, because Dan is just to his left, thigh supporting Phil’s languid head. His words are probably visible from this distance, and the last thing he desires at this moment is for Dan to read them, so he tucks the notebook into his chest. Dan knows that he’s doodling the English language onto lined trees, and that’s all that matters. 

Dan’s playing his ukulele, his chords occasionally interrupted as he searches for more to play. Phil knows that Dan’s fingertips have almost permanent red dents in them, from pressing down on the strings for too hard or too long. Dan playing ukulele is perhaps Phil’s favourite version of him. The sound itself is calming, and he’s uttering beautiful words woven on beautiful sounds, but it’s more than that. Dan himself looks like a carbon form of tranquil, content, planets in his eyes aligned. The instrument is small, sky blue and decorated with dents and a small bow, of which neither know how it got there, but it’s too lovely to take off. It should be swamped by Dan’s frame, but Dan once said that it’s like an extra limb and Phil decides he’s correct, no matter how much he kids. Because it fits, it fits with his floral jacket and it fits with his subliminal smile.

Dan begins to sway ever so slightly - probably unknowingly - singing softly. Phil smiles to himself and a _spring thinks of flowers and sunshine and i think of you_ appears on the page. 

Dan is singing something about houses of gold and Phil just wants to close his eyes and sleep.

Soon enough, he does.

-

The best things happen with Dan.

They’ll be slouched over their unmade beds, sloshing hot chocolate in hand, and they’ll be laughing so much it aches, blissful pain flowering in Phil’s chest and it feels like there are permanent laugh lines in his cheeks. 

They’ll be in a department store, the random and late time of arrival meaning it’s nearly deserted, and they’ll be chasing each other between the aisles like children in a forest, oblivious of any danger because for now it doesn’t exist.

They’ll be crying together, over a sad film or otherwise, and they’ll hug each other so tightly that they could be falling from a cliff and refusing to let go.

Phil now knows what it feels like to know you can just be yourself, because when he finishes a taxing piece of work Dan celebrates with him and Dan will just laugh when he finds Phil’s socks thrown under a mattress or caught under the door.

They have overwrought conversations, commonly during the last tendrils of vespertine, on top of the wall outside the house. The corner of the wall digs into his flesh and the night can be desiccated, but their words know no boundaries and disappear before they can regret, columbines stretching into the dark.

And it’s not just general things: there are particular events and it’s all a mess, really it is, because it’s hazed and warm and not being able to decide what is the best thing.

There’s the time Phil is reading a novel, vellum flapping under his breath. His arms are bare and his legs are tucked up beneath him, and his eyes ache from reading for hours straight. There’s a line, one of those ones which help him understand life better. Phil looks up and smiles at Dan; Dan smiles back even though he doesn’t know why Phil did to start with, and the look in his eyes is home.

There’s the time they’re sat on the wall again, the breeze kicking leaves and moss up under their swinging legs.

“I’m seeing us in strange cities and strange people,” Dan says distantly, carrying on the tentative conversation on the future even though they’ve lapsed into silent for the past few minutes. He knocks his shoulder against Phil’s.

“And us.”

Phil raises his eyebrow, trying to remain calm even though the street has started to warp.

“Yeah?”

Dan doesn’t confirm it, exactly, just looks across at the houses opposite, all vetted window boxes and paved paths, reprimanding and regaling, “Always us.”

-

And then there’s the time Phil thinks _fuck i love you_ , and it’s pasted in his mind with no capitals and too many flicks on the letters and it’s only scary once Dan’s gone.

-

Phil’s bent double over the rickety desk they’ve positioned roughly under the window, shrewd eyes picking apart the literature while different songs dissipate through his mind. It’s too early to act cognizant, and his level of concentration is dirigible.

Dan comes home with exploding stars blistering his neck in bruised purples and reds. His hair is mussed, ruffled by fingers, and the red of his swollen lips matches his bloodshot eyes. Swallowing harshly, Phil stands abruptly and sets the chair toppling. His stomach plummets through an elixir of lour and hurt, palimpsests of detrimental corrosives squabbling in his chest, and the marks share too much consanguinity with trepidation and loss for him to think straight. It’s irrefutable, thoughts coalescing in his mind until - fuck, he needs to leave.

“I’m just gonna make a coffee,” he intones, stilted and aiming for animosity. The lie consumes him and bites at his viscera, and doesn’t banish feeling but increases it.

“Ok,” Dan says. He’s tired.

Phil leans against the counter shaking for a second, the only sound being the tremble of his breaths.

(Jealousy tastes of warm milk and sugar but it won’t hurt if he just fastidiously ignores it. It won’t.)

-

The midnight is bleak and perfunctory, the distant city lights scintillating as they disappear behind trees and the streetlights few and far between. Anything interstellar is concealed by a bulk of cloud, the glow from the roads bouncing off the smog and making the sky burn a mouldy yellow. If there was silence, they would hear the hum of the engine, the car itself a speckled purple with dirt hugging the undersides. The air conditioning is spurting out just too much cold air for Phil to be comfortable, but Dan’s body heat and voice is enough to distract him.

All they need is some snow, and the whole setting could construct some type of worldly snow globe.

They’ve been driving for a few hours now, since the sky consisted of smouldering clouds catching the last rays of sunlight. Phil had said something about needing to drive, he’s not sure what, but soon enough they were getting in the car and they haven’t turned back yet.

Phil’s staring at the plaintive gloom ahead, rushes of fluorescence streaking in his peripheral. There’s not a car ahead of them for quite a distance, the horizon filtering in and out of vacillation enough for him to sense something beyond.

“When your mind is noisy and the sky open, it feels like you could keep walking until you reach the sea, and then keep going until you reach forever.”

Dan glances up from the road ahead, his hands still on the steering wheel and thought flickers behind his pupils.

“Where did that come from?”

“I don’t know,” Phil says truthfully, “But it won’t go away until I’ve said it.”

-

“It was a mistake,” Dan says.

Phil nods and pretends he doesn’t read too much into it.

-

He likes to think those four words are enough.

-

Phil’s resting his forehead against the cold pane of the window as he waits for Dan while he's in the service station, lethargy pushed up against his skull.

Dan returns with an armful of sweets and an optimistic smile.

-

They pass the time with talking and a kind of singing which barrels their lungs, more rugged and a denied kind of desperate than tender, the highway twisting out in front of them. By the end of it, Phil’s throat is raw and he can’t really remember which bed is his, but it doesn’t matter because they both end up in the same one, anyway.

-

Head rested in Dan’s lap and book weighing his hands down, Phil starts to hum. Casual and mollified. Songs which he can’t remember the words to, but he knows they’re mellifluous and easy. To his surprise, Dan joins in, and they dance their voices about each other for a bit, laughing and grinning and ingratiating.

“We work well together,” Dan mutters, his typing returning absently.

Phil doesn’t know exactly what he means.

-

“Michelle Pfeiffer is in songs a lot at the moment,” Dan says out of the blue. “And James Dean.”

It’s probably said without the intention of continuing the subject, but Phil does regardless.

“Do you think you’ll be one of those people? You could have pop song fame, one day.”

“Don’t be stupid,” and he shifts closer to Phil and turns up the volume on the film they’re watching.

-

It’s the final of the inter-university competition, and the atmosphere is excited and charged. Phil’s in the stands, gaze focused on Dan up on stage.

It’s silent; the group starts to sing and it’s the song Dan was playing when they first met. It has the same effect as before, but this time Phil has a better idea what belonging means to him. It melts seamlessly into another, and another and another, until they’re all balanced on top of each other and pulled asunder just after they’re properly begun. The voices blend together, creating crescendos and aubades and threnodies but the subject doesn’t matter when they’re all knotted together. Phil can still hear Dan’s voice, loud and clear, his eyes bright and mouth wide in a grin.

“ _I know you’re trying to forget, but between the drinks and subtle things, the holes in my apologies, you know, I’m trying hard to take it back,_ ” Dan sings, the melody transforming again and it’s lilting over another song and the sounds made to create the instruments. It’s a whole auditorium of people, but, for a shatter of a second, it feels like Dan’s talking to Phil directly, and there’s a shiver down his spine.

They skip to the last chorus, and everyone can sense that it’s about to wrap up. 

“ _Tonight!_ ” Dan sings in finality. He throws his head back as he punches the air, the music cutting short, and his chest is visibly heaving but his laugh carries over the sound system. The audience erupts in a loquacious round of applause and Phil’s on his feet before he can really register it, watching as on stage the group clamours together in one large embrace.

Pride flushes his chest and he takes in the nods of approval around him. 

And then.

A choir member comes up and kisses Dan’s cheek and all Phil can think about is Dan’s smile and how those lips crafted the galaxies he’s seen on Dan’s skin. And, for the second time, he needs to run.

It’s a fight or flight instinct and the feeling welling in his viscera was never able to be fought, and as he flees his feet throw dust into the afternoon sun. There’s a compendium on yearning coursing under astringent skin and it’s acescent, caustic major keys. There’s tears dripping down his cheeks and no one to comfort him and fuck Dan Howell, seriously fuck Dan Howell.

That’s what he’s muttering under his breath, anyway, but as soon as he arrives home (except it’s not home anymore, it can’t be because this isn’t what belonging means) he throws himself down amongst his sheets and pushes a tape into the player, screws his eyes shut against tears and truth. Everything smells too much like cold coffee and Dan, and Phil falls asleep with the chords of ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ tinging his mind crimson.

-

There’s someone shaking his shoulder, and Phil is too addled to shrink away when his lids edge open and it’s Dan stood above him. His expression is imperturbable enough for Phil’s chest to rupture again, despondent. Past Dan’s jaw, night falls with gravity behind the glass.

“You’re not going to be able to sleep, now,” Dan says gently, and, hand wrapped around Phil’s wrist, he’s tugging him up. He throws him a jumper and Phil catches a glimpse of galaxy before he pulls it on, instinct taking Dan’s hand again as they rush out of the building.

Hope and reluctance stick in his eyes like sleep.

They sit out on the wall again, acoustic versions of punk rock songs crooning out from Dan’s phone balanced haphazardly beside them. The air smells of wind and freshly cut grass, a blood stain smudged in the sky behind looming cumuli. 

Phil’s too infatuated to worry about if forgetting for now will end in catastrophe. It’s been a distorted disaster since the beginning, anyway.

Their orbits are gravitating closer together, with Dan pressed recklessly to Phil’s side, and it feels like they’re hastening towards asteroid belts and colliding with guitar strings. Phil likes to think their outlines have watered down and merged by now, limbs hooked together against the early February temperature like exhales on their skin, despite the fact that Quantum Physics or whatever states that two objects can never really touch. They’re made out of stardust, and nothing appeals to him more than the fantasy that stars have no rules.

Dan’s singing along faintly, just ebbing gusts of breeze which Phil can feel on the nape of his neck. A smile adorns their lips - Phil can sense Dan’s grin as he sings - and Dan is drumming out the rhythms in sloppy taps on Phil’s waist.

Phil twists around to look properly, to find an answer, (a perhaps). Their gazes tangle and there’s a question pounded out of the pure streaks of colour in Dan’s eyes.

(Phil wonders if sounds can clash because he can feel the thrum of Dan’s chest as steadily as he can feel his own.)

It feels like something is about to happen.

-

 _and if you're in love, then you are the lucky one,_  
_'cause most of us are bitter over someone_  
-  
_feedback is always appreciated <3 _


End file.
